Tokio Whip (32 page)

***

Hmm, I don't think so. And besides, I wouldn't want so enormous a love. You put in your time, you do what you can, you move on. Like any place, there are some things you like, some you don't. The good outweighs the bad, and so you can live with it. Oh, a few extremes here and there perhaps, but there's nothing particularly special about Tokyo. No romance. When it's time to go, you'll see old Arlene on that “big silver bird.”

***

And the city, walked through for so long, began to walk through him as he had covered it. There will be that hour outside all perceptible time when just as in a photograph album, the city's infinite deck of cards will go on opening up in the hands of the person who had known them one by one, drawing them out of the pack and separating them and putting them in order, and which now will give by themselves, from themselves, Shinobazu Pond while he's walking down Shibuya's Spanish Steps, a doorway in Higashi-Ginza (“kobikicho” – for Kabuki and other pleasures to be had there), when he's talking with friends in a Gotanda dive, the city leaping at the eyes like one cat at another, the falsely immobile city spreading herself out toward him, invading him in the middle of a thought or a shower, accepting him as her own with a brilliant flash of Nezu warrens and paths, the song of a
chindoya
band opening up a new
pachinko
parlor, or the smell of
ramen
on a late-night
ramen
cart near the station, climbing up into his memory and leaving in the same moment like a person who barely looks at one photo before moving on to another. And that's how it is, but in other ways, because the player and the cards are no longer two different things, what comes up in the hands of the involuntary memory is born of a long-fought conciliation, now the city knows that she can give herself to the traveler, her former crouching rancorous passivity becomes an unexpected visit, a sign of freedom for someone who also sought it freely; a double acceptance and a single pact, joining freedom to freedom, the only true love. And, therefore, the same as with passion or friendship, hands will loosen, contacts will become simpler. Now, day by day, we will be the city that is us day by day, beautifully, we will recognize her in every new piece of knowledge and she, who knows us now, will, in turn, recognize us in every new direction we take. But just as with love or friendship, and above all with poetry, which amounts to the same thing, the unknown will still be there.

– Julio Cortázar-Silva

***

–
Well, if that isn't it, then what was?

–
Was what?

–
What you wanted to say?

–
I forget now. You know, I had a dream the other day that all the capsules in capsule hotels were really flying vehicles, the hotels were like mini-airports, and that there was enough space in the sky that no one ever got hit. The sky was filled with these needles going all about. And then I thought better if the people inside could eventually discard the capsule coverings and become like Blakean angels, you know, long and thin and ethereal. And it was all localized, I mean they weren't intercontinental people-jets, just within the vicinity.

–
So people could get from, say, one station to another. These capsule-people eliminated the train system?

–
Yeah, doesn't it sound great?

–
No, it sounds dreadful. It's just cars in space instead of on the road. Why anyone would want to eliminate our public transportation system is beyond me. Oh, I'm sure your dream is non-polluting, but I sure don't want to see a bunch of sewing needles criss-crossing the sky, Blakean or otherwise.

–
Well, like I say, it was only a dream.

–
You know what dreams of flying mean, don't you?

–
No, what.

–
I don't know, something I suppose, maybe nothing.

–
Do dreams of levitating qualify as flying dreams?

–
I'm not sure. That depends on what dreams of flying mean. Why?

–
I also have recurring dreams of levitating. I can will myself up and move from place to place – oh, tree to tree, room to room, nothing like China to Yokohama –

–
Like your needle-angels –

–
Right, this is just very local. Anyway, I recently had this dream where I told everyone that I had this recurring dream, and there was a girl there who admitted that she had the same kind of dream, and we both levitated together. The thing is that it was like a dream within a dream and so I was all the more convinced that it was real, reality.

–
You dreamed about flying away together with a girl?

–
Yeah.

–
Let me assure you, V-Zed, it was a dream, and it is not like reality at all, it is like Hollywood. I think you'd better find out what flying dreams and levitating dreams mean – and then find out how to stop having them. How's your film going, by the way?

–
Real good.

–
Tell me more.

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Well, it's an over-haul of the earlier version, the same but different, you know.

–
No, I don't, I don't even understand that sort of language, don't even want to.

–
Ok. If you saw the two –

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You've saved the earlier one, the one Roberta so hated?

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Yes, despite all I said, at the time I wasn't about to just get rid of all that work, flawed or otherwise.

–
I'm glad to hear it. A sort of “V-Zed Hero.”

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Whatever. Anyway, this one might remind you of the earlier one, but it is its own piece. It's still about architecture, women and photography. Remember I told you about crossing the street one day and crossing the other way was a woman who looked like an East-West cross between Dominique Sanda and, uhm, what's the name of that actress who played in
Kamata Koshin Kokyu
?

–
Uhh, I know who you mean, I can't recall now … Korean.

–
…

–
Keiko Matsuzaka!

–
Yes, of course. Beautiful woman. Anyway, I ran across her again – the woman crossing the street. She's beautiful, and she's playing the lead, the woman in the film.

–
The one who goes wandering across the city with the portfolio of photographs?

–
Yes, she's a natural, seems just to float across the screen. And I have her dressed so severely.

–
Still black and white? The film I mean.

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Almost always.

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Ah, Spielberg.

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Cafferty! Give me some credit. Think silent film.

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Ok, ok, just teasing.

–
I hope so. Anyway, she's a wonder to look at. I've added some close-ups of her looking at the photos, holding them up against the sky, against the buildings they depict, holding them against her chest – no, her white blouse, and no, she won't let me touch her, to anticipate your next question – and you see her questioning and her understanding in those depthless round eyes of hers.

–
Round?

–
Nearly, she actually is Eurasian. So she holds the photos of the buildings, and she seems to stop time, holds the city still.

–
You really are excited.

–
I tell you, Cafferty, it was an awful thing Roberta did – and it was a brave and good one. I only regret that she'll probably never know it.

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Oh, V-Zed, it's still that way, is it?

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'Fraid so. Why should it change? What do apologies amount to? The damage is done, it is not undone by a few words.

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No, but … Or, yes it is, of course it can be. Otherwise, what do you want? Roberta to cut out her tongue and deliver it to you as a sign of her sincerity? Abase herself to your great artistichood?

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No, of course not. It's just that I don't know how the damage can be undone. You can't return to where you were before. And so I make a new film – same but different, and not giving a damn about her opinion.

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Well, of course not, but you shouldn't have in the first instance either. You shouldn't care much for your own opinion either, I'd daresay.

–
What does that mean?

–
Oh, it's just the way I've always interpreted that phrase no one likes to hear but keeps secreted away nonetheless, art for art's sake. You see, it's not for your own sake or much less society's that you make art, that's assuming there is a you for it to be made, and farther yet a society that might appreciate it. No, you make it for the art itself, and in that making and in that made thing you discover that much more about who you are, who you were, and who you might be, all assumptions cast aside. That's the theory, at least. And if it doesn't reveal anything – hell, it might even be better art. But my point too is that your film probably taught Roberta more about her own limitations than it ever did about yours. And listen to you now, talking about the new film, you're obviously exceeding yourself, going deeper so as to go farther out. Capsule Boy.

–
Directed by Capsule Boy! Starring Capsule Girl! Curious speech, Cafferty.

–
Just give it a thought later, alright?

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Sure. Maybe you have something there. But nonetheless, I really don't know what to do about Roberta.

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Do? What's to do about her? Do something about yourself.

–
Shoot.

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No, you aim – at yourself.

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I too often have. Do you think that first version was too self-indulgent?

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Very. I'll go one further, it was self-destructive. Whatever were you trying to get at? Cheap-jack editing, bad pun super-impositions, an oh so sincere acting style, and knowing film referential winks for all the cinephiles out there. You were imploding when you thought you were illuminating. An explosion inside a cave, no one ever notices. Capsule Boy was sinking hard that night.

–
Hmm. Why didn't you tell me this then?

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You wouldn't have listened. And besides, Roberta did. And you didn't listen.

–
Self-indulgence as self-destruction, eh?

–
Something like that, something equivalent.

–
Well, I'll grant you the self-indulgence – but I thought I was being more than merely clever, I really thought the material was good.

–
Oh it was, good and sometimes very good – but it was dishonest – it was pointing a finger at itself while also pointing one at you, when it should have been pointing past you, beyond itself.

–
Why is that dishonest?

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I do not mean that you were not being honest with yourself, no, you're a good artist, but that you were being dishonest with your art. You don't make art to show us how wonderfully clever you are – little boys do that with their mothers, who are there to indulge them – you make it to show how full of wonder art itself can be. And if it is, if it succeeds, then your reflection will be there too for those who bother to notice. No, if you want to show off your cleverness, your great wit and learning, well, you sit down and talk with your friends. I might add, that I suppose that too was a part of Roberta's protest: you were being dishonest with her. That film was the stuff of your conversations, it was a draft, a taking-off point, Capsule Boy, but not a finished flight by any means.

–
And now?

–
And now what?

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What am I to do about Roberta?

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That I cannot answer. I am sure you both hurt, but there's a mountain of pride between the two of you preventing either from making the first humbling step.

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You're getting moralistic, Cafferty.

–
Behind every aesthete – who more than Oscar?

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Did he humble himself? Did Bosie?

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Oh, Bosie never, he simply never had enough imagination to do such a thing. But Wilde? Yes, probably, in his own self-flattering way. But he was already a broken man, remember – and on top of that, or to top that, he had to take an already crumbled edifice and bring it down further yet. Shame followed by humility, and yet a breath of air, please, and so the self-posturing to the end. What a man! So complex, self-knowing. And so it is no wonder that we get the Oscar-Christ of
De Profundis
. Such overcoming and yet maintaining is rare. I couldn't do it – could you?

–
What do you mean you couldn't do it? Have you ever had to?

–
V-Zed, how long have you been here, two years, two and a half? And I – decades. What do you know of me? You look at what seems to you a mellowed man. Do you think I was born this way? How long, for that matter, have Lang and Roberta been together, more or less, together, that is? Nine, twelve years? Don't you think they have had some overcoming to do, just as I? I've spoken with Lang – the pride he's still swallowing to remain with that remarkable woman.

–
Yes, but what about you?

–
Oh, short stories, long stories. I opened myself up to Japan, let her come flooding in to the point where I'd completely forgotten myself. Oh not in any Zen sort of way, I just did not care who I was anymore. But what I was not doing was caring about whom I was becoming, much less whom I might be. I, as your generation says, went with the flow. A Bosie of my own sort. And then came the reckoning. I had not recognized that my feelings were being used – in this I also let my friends down when I did not listen to them, to their warnings – I just thought we could float along so effortlessly forever, the cash was flowing, the vital juices, and slowly but equally effortlessly I was being worn away, physically, emotionally, all of it. I'm sorry I can't tell you details now, and it sounds so melodramatic – and it is – just let me say that it took quite some time for me to recover and to learn. You see, in my own perverse way, I had enjoyed it, I had to recognize, enjoyed watching myself self-destruct, enjoyed that openness to everything that had begun it all. No, I did not enjoy the pain. But I did learn a lot about myself, my tolerance, my being able to set my self aside for the sake of another. My what, then?, porousness, this talent for absorbing almost any experience, letting it sweep into me and then drain away. I've accumulated quite a lot in my time, I tell you. But you see too, it is not the stuff that records are made of. If I were to write a diary, say every night before going to bed I write down the day's experiences, in the morning my memory of those events would be forgotten – and the pages blank. That's why you and your friends consider me a dilettante – but in fact I do not pretend to be anything at all. You want volumes, memoirs, collections, snapshots. I want to remember, but cannot. I'm a layer of shadows, V-Zed, transparencies. Embrace me three times and three times you will wrap your arms around yourself. Oh, I could tell you stories, tell you about the past, my past – but I wouldn't even know if they were true. Are they really my memories, something I've read, made up, dreamt, like your dream of dreaming levitating with the Sanda look-alike, dreamed so deeply that you thought it real? No, my stories are like Blake's dying songs, “not my own, not my own.” But what could you possibly want to know? My sex life in Japan in the 60s? My wanderings about the country? Remarkable meetings? What the country was “really like” back then? My sins, lovers, heartbreak? Lovers have walked across the city just to make love to me in the morning. There were some months of bliss with a young couple. I saw a man knife another straight in the face, and then the two embraced like long lost brothers. Or a child running through the streets, his temple pierced and the blood arcing in the air. The bodies of a couple smashed on the pavement – their parents had forbidden their marriage. There are so many stories, happy stories, sad stories, my own heart bleeding of heartbreak or joy – I actually cried when I first saw Kyoto – but I am like those tears in rain, washed away, and that is best.